About Solitex

Based in Sofia, Bulgaria, Solitex provides its clients with a wide range of managed IT services, including computer and network support. The company is also an authorized reseller of G Suite and helps its clients implement and manage it. Solitex serves small and medium-sized businesses that operate in retail, wholesale, engineering, transport and logistics, law, public relations, and human resources. Learn more at http://solitex.biz/.

About CloudBerry

Established in 2008 by a group of experienced IT professionals, CloudBerry Lab™ provides cloud-based backup and file management services to small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). CloudBerry’s offerings include powerful, easy-to-use backup management capabilities and military-grade encryption using customer-controlled keys. Customers can choose to store their backup data with more than 20 online storage providers. Learn more at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/.

Google Cloud Platform results:

60% of clients successfully adopted a new routine of managed cloud backup

Decreases price for backup service by 80%

Acquires a reliable cloud backup solution with great support for Solitex service portfolio and now provides customers with a higher level of service

Business challenge

Solitex, an intelligent business solutions company in the IT services market, never invested in a corporate backup service. Instead, they opted for open source solutions such as Cobian, while most of their clients used external hard drives for file backup. Although external HDs can be an affordable solution, clients had many problems with them. “External drives are not reliable enough. We had three cases when such HDs were damaged by a power surge. It also takes a lot of time to implement a local backup and support it,” explained Krastio Ivanov, co-founder and general manager of Solitex. Another disadvantage is that external HDs have limited capacity. It was time to find a more reliable and resilient solution.

The company first decided to use on-site storage, trying several network attached storage (NAS) devices from different vendors. However, space limitations of this solution didn’t allow Solitex to be flexible. “We had to predict what a company needed at the moment when we started to work with them and what they would need in the future. Our clients had to buy equipment that would cover their needs for only 18–24 months. The CEOs were not happy about the price they had to pay for something they may or may not use,” said Ivanov.

Solitex realized that, compared to local/tape backup, cloud backup would give their clients more scalability, reliability and security — at an affordable price. At the beginning of 2015, Solitex decided that they needed to find a corporate solution for cloud backup. “Our clients’ databases were expanding and we wanted to have a solid but affordable solution that would be easy to implement and manage,” Ivanov explained.

Solution

Solitex wanted to use Google Cloud Platform for its backup because of its reliable Cloud Storage product and fantastic support in Bulgaria. “We have been reselling Google Apps since 2009 and have only had positive experiences with Google support. It was natural to choose Google Cloud Storage,” Ivanov explains, noting that Google also offered the best price.

The company then started looking for a suitable solution that would support Google Cloud Platform and found CloudBerry Lab. CloudBerry Managed Backup gave Solitex an opportunity to easily back up computer and server files, SQL server databases, and virtual machines. The company also benefitted from the fast restore process and the option for rebranding, as well as excellent CloudBerry support.

Compared to previous cloud storage solutions Solitex had tested, Cloud Storage enabled upload times twice as fast. “That was one of the key reasons we selected Google Cloud Storage for our customers: to optimize time,” Ivanov said. With Cloud Storage and CloudBerry Managed Backup, Solitex was able to implement backup with 50% less investment and in a much shorter timeframe. Solitex clients are also thrilled that they can save over 80% of the installation and maintenance costs. “Now I can sleep peacefully because I know that our clients’ documents and systems are backed up securely and we can restore them whenever they want,” Ivanov said. “From my point of view, CloudBerry Managed Backup and Google Cloud Storage are the perfect fit for the cloud backup service that every IT service company needs. I feel confident because our new cloud backup service is now at the same high level of other Solitex services.”

Results

With CloudBerry Managed Backup, Solitex was finally able to add a reliable and cost-efficient cloud backup service to its portfolio. Shifting from on-site storage to the combination of Google Cloud Platform and the CloudBerry solution resulted in an 80% price decrease in data backup for the company, as well as the ability to provide customers with a higher level of service. In the first month alone, Solitex stored over 1.2 TB of data in Cloud Storage, a number that is constantly growing. “Even though we are in the beginning of this journey, we are thrilled to see more than a 60% adoption rate of our new backup service among our current customer base just a month after we implemented the solution,” Krastio Ivanov said.

“That was one of the key reasons we selected Google Cloud Storage for our customers: to optimize time. With Google Cloud Storage and CloudBerry Managed Backup, Solitex was able to implement backup with 50% less investment and in a much shorter timeframe."

—Krastio Ivanov, co-founder and general manager of Solitex

About Solitex

Based in Sofia, Bulgaria, Solitex provides its clients with a wide range of managed IT services, including computer and network support. The company is also an authorized reseller of G Suite and helps its clients implement and manage it. Solitex serves small and medium-sized businesses that operate in retail, wholesale, engineering, transport and logistics, law, public relations, and human resources. Learn more at http://solitex.biz/.

About CloudBerry

Established in 2008 by a group of experienced IT professionals, CloudBerry Lab™ provides cloud-based backup and file management services to small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). CloudBerry’s offerings include powerful, easy-to-use backup management capabilities and military-grade encryption using customer-controlled keys. Customers can choose to store their backup data with more than 20 online storage providers. Learn more at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/.